Post four, 2.5.20


I really enjoy learning about the roles that early art directors played in the United States, the confusion they faced about what to call themselves (just like we talked about what to call graphic designers in the beginning of the quarter), and what kinds of changes they would make to designs. I particularly liked seeing the changes that Loewy made to the Lucky Strike cigarettes packaging in 1940...changing the background from green to white to make the box seem cleaner, fresher and of a better quality, and putting the circle logo on both sides to increase exposure of the product. Such small and seemingly simple changes really enhanced the design as a whole, which I love learning about as we go into our final papers/presentations as I would love to continue to study packaging and branding. I also enjoy thinking about type on packaging, and I think that opening up the letter spacing on “cigarettes” on the newer packaging was a nice design choice; it looks much sleeker after the change in my opinion. I appreciated William Morris's quote in the chapter, "good design is good business," which couldn't be more fitting to American's mentalities.

Hollis Richard. Graphic Design: a Concise History. Thames & Hudson, 2016.

 I also enjoyed learning about Alvin Lustig's style of book covers, with very sophisticated, clean typography and generally neat designs. I do see how his work resembles that of some European Modern art, with similar styles as Picasso or Matisse. 
  

 Lustig, Alvin. Exiles, James Joyce, front cover, 1947. 
Lustig, Alvin. Selected Poems, Kenneth Patchen, front cover, 1946. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Post 1 (Matthew Donald)

Image
One of the pieces that really caught my eye during the reading was Alphonse Mucha's Job  cigarette papers advertisement. There was something very intriguing about the way he created a background texture using an element from the foreground. "JOB" is written in big letters at the very top of the poster and its accented by "job" written in little letters evenly throughout the background. I think it does a good job at creating an interesting composition while maintaining the central focus around the brand. The big "JOB" flows on top of a large ring where a woman sits. I think the overall shape of the illustration was executed very well because of its emphasis on curves. The curves of the hair and the woman are all reinforced by the circle in the center of the page. Mucha, A. (1898). "Job" poster for cigarette papers. Retrieved from  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOB_(rolling_papers)  on January 1st, 2020. In this piece of typography created ...
Read more

Post 3 - Sam Weible

Image
From the experimentation and norm-breaking designs of the avant garde movement came some of my favorite European designs predating 1940s. From this period, I particularly love the posters advertising the London Underground. I first saw some of these posters at the Art Institute over the summer and was immediately intrigued by their design, how they managed somehow be both artistically beautiful and utilitarian. The elements of each poster followed suit, text and imagery being generally separate from one another on the page yet communicating a since of uniformity. While that was the case for most of the poster I got to see, it wasn't for every Underground poster. There are actually a great variance of design and style between these mass-produced posters. This poster, "Power", from the textbook, for example, hardly has any visual unity. What it's trying to communicate is unclear and the visual ties the artist tries to make between each element isn't as unifying as...
Read more

2/5 in class reflection

I liked learning a bit of back story on Bert Stern. I like learning a more in depth about a designers history. Its interesting to see where these designers are coming from however, I know that the time frame of this class doesn't really allow for too much of that. I didn't really like watching the ted talk at the beginning because, while the message is good, this is the fourth class I have had to watch that talk in.
Read more